Vancouver B.C. plans to fight homelessness

CITY PLANS TO FIGHT HOMELESSNESS AS WELL AS `POOR-BASHING’ LAWS: GREEN

Welfare – The agenda: Converting hotels to low-cost housing, paying `living-wage’

By Frances Bula

[This article was published in: The Vancouver Sun, October 30, 2004.]



Vancouver – Vancouver has come with a plan to tackle homelessness that its biggest political advocate says is the alternative to poor-bashing laws.

The plan recommends unusually aggressive action, such as the city taking over one residential hotel every year for low-cost housing and establishing a “living-wage policy” for anyone who does contract work with the city.

It also hints that taxpayers could be asked to vote on capital plans that provide money for social housing, the way Seattle voters do.

But it calls on the province to solve the real causes of homelessness by increasing access to welfare, providing housing for the mentally ill, and increasing services for the mentally ill and drug addicted.

“This is the most comprehensive plan any government has ever laid out for dealing with the homeless and it does it by putting dignity and inclusiveness on the table,” said Coun. Jim Green about the city’s Homeless Action Plan and its more than 70 recommendations, released this week. “Other people want to outlaw the homeless. This is the opposite.”

Homelessness has approximately doubled throughout the Lower Mainland in the last four years. A count of Vancouver Homeless people in February estimated that as many as 1,200 people sleep out a night and the report says that number appears to be rising.

Cities and towns throughout B.C., from Kelowna to Fort St. John, also have seen increases in homelessness.

As a result, many B.C. municipal politicians supported the Safe Streets Act, which was first proposed by Vancouver-Burrard MLA Lorne Mayencourt a year ago to provide new kinds of penalties for aggressive panhandling.

But Green said the province’s decision to support Mayencourt’s approach is regrettable.

“The province should be a team player, but instead, they’ve unleashed that rabid cockroach on us.”

The report, which will be going out to the public for discussion, stresses that it is important to tackle homelessness because of the waste of human potential, drain on public resources, and serious negative impact on the city’s livability and economy.

As well, the city’s homeless coordinator, Jill Davidson, warns: “The longer people are street homeless, the more homelessness becomes an entrenched way of life.”

Davidson’s report stresses that the city doesn’t have real power to change the homelessness situation. That rests with the province.

“We really are recognizing that the province’s welfare policies are contributing to homelessness,” she said in an interview.

The city’s homelessness researcher, Judy Graves, used to observe that 25 per cent of people on the street weren’t on welfare. Now that’s up to 75 per cent.

The report has also followed the lead of cities like New York and San Francisco, which have decided to put the largest part of their resources into what’s called “supported” housing for the mentally ill, which means housing that comes with on-site health workers and other staff.

It calls for the province to help fund 3,200 units in the city and suggests Vancouver could put more of its available resources into this form of housing rather than shelters or transitional housing.

As for what the city can do specifically, it recommends that:

· Vancouver buy a residential hotel every year to build up a stock of low-cost housing.
· It should consider allowing developers to build rooms smaller than the 320 square feet allowed now.
· It should run a pilot project with the provincial Ministry of Human Resources to do special outreach in order to get homeless people on to welfare.
· And it should look at establishing a “living-wage policy” for people who do contract work with the city.

The city has bought two residential hotels since the centre-left Coalitionof Progressive Electors swept to power in 2002, the Stanley New Fountain in Gastown for $2 million, and the Granville Hotel for $2.8 million, on which it is spending $4.25 million to renovate existing units to larger units with bathrooms.

Davidson says the city is using money it gets from developers of market residential towers, through levies and amenity contributions, to help pay for social housing.